Violence in South Africa

Those of you who have heard anything about the current feeling towards foreigners in South Africa might find the following extract from an email (05/27/08) interesting. The email is written by a sister of one of my friends living in South Africa. There family is from Ghana:

“Hey, good hearing from you ! yes crazy times in SA! ….gratefully most of the violence has stopped. the government took forever to respond now they are trying to have peace talks with those who were committing the barbaric acts. so we will see what happens. its crazy rondebosch (Cape Town suburb) is so quiet cos most of the black kids at uct (University of Cape Town) are foreign students and you can spot a foreign black from miles away, so iv just been chilling at home since its study week. but things are better.but last friday was hectic cos the ppl were beating up the somali taxi drivers in clarermont (Cape Town suburb), and looting somali owned shops in milnerton (Cape Town suburb) and mowbray (Cape Town suburb)! so there was a heavy police presence in rondebosch were they evacuated most of the somali refugees to the rondebosch police station for safety as well as in random church halls in rondebosch. these days if you are not hearing police sirens its helicopters in the air! but asylum seekers and economic migrants have lost faith in SA, thousands of mozambicans were evacuated by their governments back home. so many consulates are organising safe passage back home for their nationals. but genuine refugees cant just get up and leave cos there is a possibility of them facing persecution upon returning to their countries of origin. and since SA granted them asylum, the SA government has undertaken an international obligation to protect these people. its disgusting how the government looked on as people were burnt to death, houses looted and torched, individuals butchered with pangas (machetes)!! we experienced a genocide on our doorstep! and the sad thing is it started in april but government said it wasnt xenophobic attacks just a criminal gang, only when all hell broke loose in alexander did the media air it….otherwise cape town is same old same oldbut south africa as a nation is ashamed of the atrocities they experienced first hand. pity those in power took a while before they felt shame and started speakiing out - but thats life!!”

With regards to the LDS Church and their actions, she said:

“from the sounds of things all the "refugees" from church were not affected by the violence, bishops whose members were in the hard hit areas, went into the informal settlements to find their members, and members of the wards housed them and i think they are still housing them. I guess thats the priesthood in action”

SFG

So, we’ve decided to start growing our own food… well… at least some of it anyway. Jim and Debi (Traci’s parents) started a garden at the bottom of their yard and have invited us to join them, as we currently don’t have much space available at our place. We have decided to use half the garden space for a gardening technique that perhaps some of you have heard of, or even tried yourself: it’s called “square-foot gardening”.

We just finished building the 4-foot squared, six-inch deep planting boxes that the technique calls for, and mixing the prescribed blend of compost and vermiculite, and are going to begin planting tomorrow. The guy that came up with this idea has apparently been successfully doing it for years in many parts of the world. He markets his method as “no work, organic gardening” and claims that it yields 100% of a harvest in 20% of the space. So far, the prep work has been relatively simple and rewarding; hopefully the planting, maintenance and harvest will leave us in a similar mood - I have a feeling it will.

Have any of you tried this gardening technique or any others that you found to be successful?